IndexNow key generator

What makes an IndexNow key valid?

The protocol is specific about this. A key must be between 8 and 128 characters and may contain only lowercase letters, uppercase letters, digits and hyphens. Many people use a UUID with the dashes removed; the key above is 32 hexadecimal characters, which is always valid.

Where does the key file go?

In the root of your site, so it loads at https://yourdomain.com/{yourkey}.txt, with the key as the only content and nothing else — no HTML, no wrapper, no styling. It must be publicly readable with no login. You can host it in a subfolder instead, but then you must tell each search engine where it is using the keyLocation parameter on every submission.

One key per host

This catches people out. IndexNow verifies a key against a specific host, and example.com, www.example.com and blog.example.com are three different hosts. You may reuse the same key string across them, but each one needs its own copy of the file at its own root.

Do I need to keep the file forever?

Yes. Search engines re-check it when you submit. If the file disappears, submissions start failing with HTTP 403 or 422. Treat it as permanent site furniture, like your robots.txt.

Rather not do this yourself?

Generating a key is the easy part — the ongoing work is watching for changes, working out which URLs to submit, batching them correctly, respecting rate limits and keeping a log of what happened. That's what we do, for $12 per domain per year.

Set up automatic submission →